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On an African safari, the Big Five refers to large and lumbering, potentially lethal animals: lions and rhinos and the like. Not so New Zealand. Down here, the Big Five are notably small: mainly birds, decidedly non-lethal and awfully cute.

These include a waddling national icon (the nocturnal and perpetually sleepy kiwi); a tiny living dinosaur (the tuatara, a lizard-like reptile that provides a rare, direct link to prehistoric times); a mischievous parrot with a hooked beak and sharp sense of humour, “the second smartest parrot in the world,” as I was told (the kea, as close to a trickster figure as you’ll find in New Zealand).

New Zealand wildlife: Kiwis and penguins and stingrays, oh myBack to video

During my time there, I went on several nature tours and treks, all easily managed, all with their own charms. Here then are my favourites.

SOUTH ISLAND:

WILLOWBANK

At the Willowbank nature reserve, just north of Christchurch, you can check off all of the Big Five (kiwi, kea, kaka, takahe, tuatara) in an afternoon’s stroll. I do recommend a guided tour, though. How else would I have known that the kea is the second smartest parrot in the world? The NZ Conservation Trust at Willowbank runs a very successful kiwi hatchery as well, breeding and then returning the vulnerable young birds to the wild. They even allow you to walk quietly through a darkened habitat to watch kiwis shuffle about, almost blind, using their beaks like canes, vestigial wings tucked into their feathery bodies.

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Cultural Bonus: Willowbank is also home to Ko Tane, the only Maori cultural performance and traditional hangi feast on the South Island. (Most of New Zealand’s Maori population settled on the warmer North Island.) The evening features the spinning dance of the pom-pom-like poi and the always popular, skin-tingling haka war dance. (More accurately, a challenge dance.) It ends with a full-scale feast cooked in earthen pits. Food. Lots and lots of food. The problem with a hangi, of course, is that two or three days later, you’re hungry again.

The elegant town of Oamaru, with its Victorian buildings and steam punk vibe, is also — incongruously — a bedding-down point for New Zealand’s little blue penguins, the world’s smallest penguin and, strangely, not one of the Big Five. They come ashore every evening as soon as it gets dark, scuttling up the rocks and then hurrying across to their nesting hutches, having spent the entire day out at sea gobbling fish. Because penguins don’t really see the colour orange (no need to amid the deep greens and blues of the ocean), a grandstand has been set up for spectators with a soft orange spotlight to illuminate the nightly procession.

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Handy tip: Stay till the very end. It takes about an hour for them all to come ashore, and afterwards you can hear the penguin couples vocalizing and chirping as they catch up the day. It’s incredibly endearing.

OROKONUI WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

A majestic swath of forest above Dunedin, Orokonui is a vast fenced-in sanctuary where introduced varmints — weasels, rats, stoats and cats — are kept at bay to protect the local endangered fauna within. It’s part of an overall national initiative to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050. At Orokonui, hiking trails of various difficulty wind their way through the temperate forests and open heights, including one that takes you to New Zealand’s tallest tree, a towering 81-metre-high eucalyptus. As with Willowbank, I really do recommend a guided walk for at least part of the way: the woman who took us around was wonderful, pointing out the takahe, a flightless bird, long thought extinct, as well as plants — medicinal, edible, and otherwise: lemon wood, pepper trees and honey-producing manuka.

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A kiwi bird is cradled at Otorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park on the North Island of New Zealand. Courtesy, Will Ferguson /Calgary

NORTH ISLAND:

ZEALANDIA BY NIGHT

Wellington, New Zealand’s funky, freewheeling capital is one of the few urban areas in the world where biodiversity is actually increasing, thanks largely to the presence of another fenced-in sanctuary: Zealandia. In here, the melodic and hypnotically vocal tui are safely ensconced. A bird with such a rich repertoire it can “perform duets all by itself.” (These urban birds have also learned to imitate car alarms and the beep-beep-beep of trucks backing up.) Zealandia is also home to such attractive specimens as the leaf-veined slug and a muddy-water eel our guide was strangely fond of. She got practically giddy every time she spotted one as we crossed a creek.

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Zealandia features no fewer than four of the “Big Five,” all of them in the wild. They also offer unique night walking tours to spot the ever-nocturnal kiwi. We saw several, though in honesty it was more of a “kiwi bum” tour; we usually spotted them as they waddled away from us. As a Canadian, the strangest sensation in trekking through a forest at night was reminding myself that absolutely nothing in New Zealand wants to kill or eat you. No bears, wolves, snakes, cougars. And yet, with every snap of a twig I spun around, causing the guide to grin. She could always spot the North Americans in her tour.

Bonus trek: For a more rugged, back-bouncing journey, overland “seal safaris” run from Wellington as well, taking you up and over the heights, and then down to a rugged coast where plump fur seals loll about contentedly on the rocks. And is there anything in this world more content that a seal sunning itself?

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Think Question Period times a thousand. The gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers on New Zealand’s rugged east coast. Photo, Will Ferguson /Calgary

GANNET SAFARIS

The elegant Art Deco city of Napier is gateway to the rugged headlands of Cape Kidnappers, named after a mistaken conflict between Captain Cook and local Maori, who would have considered it more a “rescue” than a kidnapping. (The Maori had snatched a Polynesian cabin boy of Cook’s, assuming he was Maori and being held against his will.)

Cape Kidnappers is home to the world’s largest and most easily accessible mainland gannet colony. An overland 4WD trek along gulleys and cliffs high above shark-tooth islands brings you up to the ongoing cacophony that is gannet society. Think Question Period in the House, times a thousand. Squawking, preening, strutting, fluttering their wings: all just metres away from you. As we walked over, our driver-guide, with typically dry kiwi wit, said, “Who do we have today? I see Gladys is here, and David, and Marion and Morris. There’s Alan and Cathy. Oh, and Graham’s at home today, too.”

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Bonus wildlife: Napier is home to New Zealand’s National Aquarium, which features a walk-through shark and stingray tank, as well as — yes! more kiwis, shuffling about in a dim-lit habitat. The aquarium also hosts a band of rescued penguins that includes “Penguin of the Month” awards: “Nice” (for good behaviour) and “Naughty” (for bad behaviour, such as pushing or nipping). When I went through, Lulu was on the naughty list.

WILD STINGRAY FEEDING

Further up the coast, beyond Napier, is the city of Gisborne, where the sun first rises on the world. And north of Gisborne is where I had one of the strangest encounters. Wearing waders, we followed a guide out into shallow tidal waters to feed wild stingrays. Who knew that stingrays were so playful, so affectionate? OK, so it may have had something to do with the chunks of fish we were holding, but still. They pushed and nuzzled as we petted them, then they vacuumed the fish from our palms. Stingrays move like liquid shiitake mushrooms and are more beautiful than I ever imagined. The guides had given them names as well, including one they’d dubbed Pancake, because she kept flipping over and getting stuck upside down. “Not our smartest stingray,” as the guides put it. One only wonders what their names were for us?

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